Biochemistry Related Quotes

Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps that represent successive developmental stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles, like advanced problems in a graduate exam in biochemistry or logic. But to understand life and the cosmos better, perhaps we are required to transform not only our minds but our hearts. For the whole being, body and soul, mind and spirit, is implicated. Perhaps we must go not only high and far but down and deep. Our world view and cosmology, which defines the context for everything else, is profoundly affected by the degree to which all out faculties–intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral, emotional, somatic, spiritual, relational–enter the process of knowing. How we approach "the other," and how we approach each other, will shape everything, including out own evolving self and the cosmos in which we participate.

Next is diet or nutrition—or as I prefer to call it, nutritional biochemistry. The third domain is sleep, which has gone underappreciated by Medicine 2.0 until relatively recently. The fourth domain encompasses a set of tools and techniques to manage and improve emotional health. Our fifth and final domain consists of the various drugs, supplements, and hormones that doctors learn about in medical school and beyond. I lump these into one bucket called exogenous molecules, meaning molecules we ingest that come from outside the body.

For me the only way total calories consumed matter in terms of weight management are their total contribution to fattening biochemical reactions from different foodstuffs. In other words it does matter how many calories of bread or meat you eat as 100 calories will have a smaller biochemical effect than 1,000 calories of both foods. Biochemistry leads and physics follows.

Nobody is ever made happy by winning the lottery, buying a house, getting a promotion or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies. A person who just won the lottery or found new love and jumps from joy is not really reacting to the money or the lover. She is reacting to various hormones coursing through her bloodstream and to the storm of electric signals flashing between different parts of her brain. Unfortunately for all hopes of creating heaven on earth, our internal biochemical system seems to be programmed to keep happiness levels relatively constant. There's no natural selection for happiness as such - a happy hermit's genetic line will go extinct as the genes of a pair of anxious parents get carried on to the next generation. Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that evolution has moulded us to be neither too miserable nor too happy. It enables us to enjoy a momentary rush of pleasant sensations, but these never last for ever. Sooner of later they subside and give place to unpleasant sensations. (...) Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point. Some air-conditioning systems are set at twenty-five degrees Celsius. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete (...) incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may. (...) Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to the set point.

when we consider DNA, the genotype is the DNA sequence that contains instructions for the living organism. The phenotype is the observable characteristics of an organism, such as its anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, and behavior. The genotype interacts with the environment to produce the phenotype. To put this in an everyday situation, consider the blueprint as a house’s genotype and the actual house its phenotype. The phenotypic construction process is the building of the house using the blueprint as information about what and how to do it. The phenotype is related to the genotype that describes it, but there is a world of physical difference between the genotype and the phenotype and even the phenotypic construction process. For one, the genotype is non-dynamic; it is a quiescent, one-dimensional sequence of symbols (DNA’s symbols are nucleotides) that has no energy or time constraints. Like a blueprint, it can sit around for years, as you have probably learned from watching CSI. The genotype dictates what should be constructed (perhaps a really cute dog), but the DNA itself does not look or act anything like a cute dog. On the other hand, the phenotype (the cute dog) is dynamic and uses energy, especially if it is a border collie.

To reason about something is to proceed from one premise or proposition or concept to another, in order ideally to arrive at some conclusion, and in a coherent sequence whose connections are determined by the semantic content of each of the steps taken—each individual logical syntagma of the argument, each clause or sentence or symbol. In a simple syllogism, for example, two premises in conjunction inevitably produce a conclusion determined by their logical content. “Every rose in my garden is red; the rose I am looking at now is in my garden; therefore, the rose I am looking at now is red.” But then the series of steps by which the mind arrives at the conclusion of a series of propositions simply cannot be identical with a series of brute events in the biochemistry of the brain. If the mechanical picture of nature is correct, after all, any sequence of physical causes and effects is determined entirely by the impersonal laws governing the material world. One neuronal event can cause another as a result of physical necessity, but certainly not as a result of logical necessity. And yet the necessary connection that exists between the addition of two numbers and the sum thereby yielded is one produced entirely by the conceptual content of the various terms of the equation, and not by any set of biochemical contingencies. Conversely, if the tenets of mechanistic materialism are sound, the mere semantic content of a thought should not be able to affect the course of physical events in the cerebrum. Even if the long process of human evolution has produced a brain capable of reason, the brain cannot produce the actual contents of reasoning; the connections among the brain’s neurons cannot generate the symbolic and conceptual connections that compose an act of consecutive logic, because the brain’s neurons are related to one another organically and therefore interact physically, not conceptually. Clearly, then, there are mental events that cannot be reduced to mechanical electrochemical processes.

An article published in the magazine Bioscience, Biotechnology and Biochemistry in 2009 reported that drinking diluted apple everyday for as short as 3 months decreases abdominal fat, waist circumference and the level of blood triglycerides. It has been proven that high levels of blood triglycerides and abdominal fat are related to high blood pressure, stroke and heart attack. The malic acid content of apple cider vinegar helps unclog each artery in the body. The beta-carotene in apple cider vinegar also helps fat to be metabolized for energy.

But the power problem has its roots in anatomy and biochemistry and temperament. Power has to be curbed on the legal and political levels; that’s obvious. But it’s also obvious that there must be prevention on the individual level. On the level of instinct and emotion, on the level of the glands and the viscera, the muscles and the blood. If I can ever find the time, I’d like to write a little book on human physiology in relation to ethics, religion, politics and law.

Every chemical compound, according to Engels, comes into existence only at a certain time in the development of the universe when the conditions are appropriate for it; and when it does come into existence it manifests this by entering into its characteristic relations. Neither carbon compounds or proteins are ideal forms, but are themselves witnesses of the conditions on a cooling planet. It is here that occurs his celebrated remark that life is the mode of existence of proteins.

I am troubled by grave doubts about the usefulness of scientific endeavor and have a whole drawer filled with treatises on politics and their relation to science, written for myself with the sole purpose of clarifying my mind, and finding an answer to the question: will science lead to the elevation or destruction of -man- and has my scientific endeavor any sense?

I am troubled by grave doubts about the usefulness of scientific endeavor and have a whole drawer filled with treatises on politics and their relation to science, written for myself with the sole purpose of clarifying my mind, and finding an answer to the question: will science lead to the elevation or destruction of man , and has my scientific endeavor any sense?

Taken together, then, what do these two monkey studies have to tell us about nutritional biochemistry? Avoiding diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction—especially by eliminating or reducing junk food—is very important to longevity. There appears to be a strong link between calories and cancer, the leading cause of death in the control monkeys in both studies. The CR monkeys had a 50 percent lower incidence of cancer. The quality of the food you eat could be as important as the quantity. If you’re eating the SAD, then you should eat much less of it. Conversely, if your diet is high quality to begin with, and you are metabolically healthy, then only a slight degree of caloric restriction—or simply not eating to excess—can still be beneficial.

Drug use has been found in all human societies throughout historical and prehistorical times, as well as being evident in closely related species. These observations warrant serious evolutionary exploration.

No one meat for us to be miserable. We actually make "happy hormones" in our brains. These are designed to make us feel good. But there are many things that can turn off these hormones, just as there are many things that can turn them on. And the amount of happy hormones you make in the brain is directly related to the type of diet you ingest. The difficulty is that we are all different in our biochemistry, and hence, also unique in what foods make us the happiest. In other words, many people feel really mellow and content on a high carbohydrate (vegan or alkaline) diet. Many use this to optimize their athletic performance. While others are carnivores, not vegans, and feel best with meat (acid diet) at every meal. They get weak and lower their zip if they lower their meat content.

Keep in mind that teaching in tribal societies is generally performed by biologically related, caring, and deeply invested elders, one on one or in small groups. In these naturally occurring, attachment-based apprenticeships, learning is interwoven with the behaviors and biochemistry of bonding.

biochemistry tells us that there is no receptor for calories, that is, no way for cells to sense how many calories are coming in, only how much of each type of macronutrient. The available chemical energy will ultimately show up but there is no reason to think that there will be a direct relation between calories and weight gain or loss. Calories do count but not in a simple way.